, 1887-12-06
RETURN OF THE GYPsIE5.

pickering with Unfortunate Farmers.
Laying by "A Winters stock Of Eny.
Thus many return to the cities to their
actual habitation5, which may have stood
idle the summer through. Numbers trail
along the highways until their farm homes
are reached, where, If they be rented, as
they usually are to some less thrifty far
mer, they have reserved a few months
housing. Thousands wander into the
central south for all winter dickering and
trading there. Many return to their VII
Iage homes, over or alongside mammoth
barns, where a winters gypsy j~ocEcying
is done. Great crowds of them, not yet
so well along as their brethren in gain
iugs, s.raggle into the cities. In the CoEl-
moner quarters these turn their hands 10
bird training, basket weaving, training
ard trading in valuable cats and dogs,
while hundreds of gypsy youths secure
ready employment under gentlemen's
grooms, and particularly at the care of
horses being fitted for the next years
events OF the turf. Still others, and these
comprise the larger number, come troop
ing into thousands of little villages and
countryside places throughout the south
cIn portions of northern states and in the
northern tier of southern states, arriving
as early as the last October days. The
movements of these provide a genuine
gypsy study.
Their arrival is hardly noticed, as they
never come in n large body, but in tyos
and threes, and it is often weeks before
the little gypsy community is at its best.
The vanguard has quietly rented some
deserted roadside inn at the outskirts Of
the village, or some former spacious home
long gone TO decay. This is always got
for a song. However much house room
it may have, it must invariably possess the
requisite of a great ramshackle barn and
outlying sheds. For Il little time the gyp-
sizes seem TO merely exist here. But every
day their women folk may be seen miles
away. spinning in light buggies over the
autumn roads in every direction. Not
only are they found on the well Travelled
highways, but every grass grown wagon
o leading TO secluded and remotest
farms has been hunted and haunted. At
this home and that; there tarrying I'M
der pretense of admiring some animal;
there making n triiing purchase of
vegetables and poultry; over yonder bar
trring for, but never buying, grain and
hay; again telling a fortune or two if
appealed to; but seldom urging such
profitable vocation-in a little time these
~canniest and most indomitable of all hui
man detectives have at their tongues
end, for home reference, every possible
item of information regarding the finan-
cial standing and condition of every
farmer for half a county round.
Then of a sudden some iuckless wight,
under terror of an overdue note or re-
lcntless mortgage, has sold his cornfield
'in the shock to the gypsles. Another's
weather Drowned stacks of hay have
come into their possession. Then begins,
and to continue the whole winter through,
a ccaseleSs procession of young stock.
horses and mules. toward the gypsies'
temporary domicile. Drunken farmer,
unfortunate farmer, thriftless farmer, in
all directions, pays the penalties of i'll
doing or i'll luck to these superb jockeys,
who, buying for pittances, and for
months selling at excellent prices or not
at all, at their i~mprovised market, make
large profits; and the spring finds them
ready for greedy city buyers with great
numbers Of stock transformed from
shaggy, ambling beasts to animals of
such splendid form and spirit as do even
a city gypsy traders eyes good to look
upon. The amount of live stock thus
gathered up every winter throughout the
country is tremendous; the profits are
inconceivnbly great, and these wizards
of the stable must eventually largely on
troll the entire horse trade Of the country.
Edgar l.. Wakeman's Letter.